Major course cuts on the horizon at Lincoln

Tertiary Update – Vol 20 No 36

Lincoln University should cut courses, move away from being a standalone institution and privatise core services, an advisory board says.

The report by the university’s transformation board also recommends priority is given to increasing Māori and Pasifika student numbers.

It is not clear how staff would be affected if management adopts the recommendation that Lincoln “move away from being a stand-alone university” and focus on its role as part of the Lincoln Hub partnership with several Crown research institutes.

There is also uncertainty about how staff will be affected by the recommendation that management out-source administration and contract other institutions to provide courses that are not central to Lincoln’s focus on land-based sciences.

Jo McLean, organiser of the Tertiary Education Union branch at Lincoln University, said it was disappointing the advisory board did not explain exactly what these changes would mean for staff.

“We hope management will make this clearer in the coming weeks and months as we work with them to ensure a sustainable future for Lincoln,” she said.

The advisory board was set up following an independent report last year that recommended Lincoln should “integrate” with another university to deal with its budget deficit.

Rather than taking up the recommendation at that time, university management opted instead to set up the board, which has now suggested the university remain open to future partnerships of all types, including integration.

The university should redefine its course offerings, build its research and “reset” its governance and management capability, the report said.

“Staff here are dedicated to their jobs and to ensuring students have the best possible learning experience. It is vital they have an opportunity to respond to these recommendations and are given a strong voice in the decisions about what their institution looks like in the future,” McLean said.

The Tertiary Education Union (TEU) warned recently that Unitec’s calamitous experiment outsourcing administrative services should be a lesson to all institutions about the dangers of privatisation.

“Privatisation simply does not work and only ever has disastrous consequences for staff and students. Lincoln’s management should take a look at what happened at Unitec and immediately toss that recommendation in the bin,” Sharn Riggs, national secretary of the TEU, said.